


Rare and Imprecise

by ReyloTrashCompactor (NextToSomething)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmates, i make my own rules, it follows tfa and it doesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-11 15:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8990863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NextToSomething/pseuds/ReyloTrashCompactor
Summary: Soul bonds are rare and imprecise. Few beings took any stock in their occurrence, though the midwife cooed that it was a sign of great luck to have a son born with an omen etched down his back.Leia didn't like it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WildConcerto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildConcerto/gifts).



> Written for the Ring in the New Year with Reylo gift exchange. This is something new for me, so I truly hope my recipient enjoys. <3

Soul bonds are rare and imprecise. Few beings took any stock in their occurrence, though the midwife cooed that it was a sign of great luck to have a son born with an omen etched down his back.

Leia didn't like it. Her little son was too young to have something already permanently marking him. Life did that well enough--there was no reason why spindly black letters should march down his delicate little spine before he'd even settled at her breast for the first time.

But they were there, letters that were still a bit indistinct on his wrinkled, brand-new skin. After he was cleaned and fed--odd sensation, that--the exhausted princess-turned-general carefully laid Ben Organa along her arm, on his taut little stomach. She played as if she were trying to burp him, but her massaging fingers worked to smooth out his warm, soft skin to better read the rare and imprecise omen gifted him.

_You. You're afraid. That you'll never be as strong as Darth Vader._

Leia cried out, clutching a hand to her chest, and her lady's maid rushed to her side trying to take the baby away from her and see to her mistress. Leia pushed her off, less gently than she meant. She wrapped the nursing cloth tightly around her son, altogether terrified and possessive. She didn’t want the maid to read this. She didn’t want it to be true.

"I'm fine! I'm fine. Leave me with my son. I need a moment."

The girl made to leave, but Leia stopped her when she made it to the door. "What of my consort? What of Han? Has he made it yet?"

The girl shook her head, looking away. "No, my lady. He is set to arrive in the early morning, last I heard. Shall I ask after him?"

Leia bit her lip but shook her head. "No. He'll get here when he gets here."

Ben had started crying, and she lifted him to her breast again, her fingers gently prodding the notches of his spine. The door closed and Leia exhaled heavily, flopping back into the pillows. Ben detached from her nipple and she readjusted him amid his outraged grunts.

_Darth Vader. Never be as strong as Darth Vader._

That was a name she hadn't wanted her son to ever know, and now it was emblazoned on his skin. She held her child closer, wishing Han would hurry the hell up and return home.

\---

Rey didn't know that she had a soul omen until it was pointed out to her in the communal bath of the castle. Before Plutt had seen to her redistribution to the castle staff, she had only ever bathed in her own grubby little rooms, a cloth and a shallow basin of water that grew cloudy after only a few dips of the soiled cloth.

"You haven't got a last name but you have an omen?" the girl had asked, her voice shrewd and her eyes tight.

"What are you talking about?" Rey covered her body with her hands, not liking this new lack of privacy. She was young yet, only thirteen, and wasn't comfortable looking upon her slowly changing body herself, much less having it closely regarded by strangers. The other girl was bold enough, painfully naked with bright red hair in more than one place on her milk white body.

"You've an omen on your spine, desert rat. Though you've done a good job bleaching it with the sun and splotching it with freckles. You're supposed to care for an omen, keep it from the sun and all. I can hardly read it, you've been so careless with it. This is why only the highest born usually have them. They're wasted on trash like you."

Rey scrunched her nose, recalling that the girl sneering at her was only a serving wench and didn't have much room to talk on class and stature. Though she did suppose that being a lesser member of the Princess’s hunt ranked her lower than serving wench. At least this girl got to see to the royal family. Rey only fed them, and indirectly at that.

"Wh-what's it say?" Rey tried to stretch to see down her own back, but it was no use. The polished durasteel mirror on the wall was a lost cause--it was steamed over from a full day's worth of bathing girls. One could only use the mirror first thing, before the tubs were filled.

"You don't know what it says?" the girl shrieked. Rey did not like her. Then the girls face twisted, her eyes narrowed. "What will you give me to read it?"

"Nothing!" Rey spat. She could try to make it to the baths before the water was heated. She shook her head. She'd be halfway into her work day by then.

"I'm reading your fortune, rat. You pay fortune readers. Now, what will you give me?"

Rey sighed. Hands still wrapped around her naked body, Rey went to her bundle of clothes and dug out a grimey copper from the hem of her tunic, standing so the girl couldn't see where she was taking it from.

She handed the copper to her. "Here. Now tell me what it says."

The girl made a twirling motion with her finger and Rey obediently turned.

"It's really faded," the girl huffed.

"Yes, you said that. What does it say?"

Her ice cold fingers prodded along her spine and Rey bit back the inclination to shudder. "It says, _'The droid. Where is it?_ '"

Rey scoffed. "It does not. Give me back my copper."

"On my honor, it does. I can trace it if you want."

"No, don't--" Rey said, wanting the girl to stop touching her. But she didn't listen and traced the words anyway.

"What a droll thing for an omen to say,” the girl commented blandly. “They're supposed to be romantic. The turning point of your life. You're destined to wed some greasy mechanic, you are, for your life to hinge on a stupid droid."

"At least I'm destined for someone," Rey snapped back. "You probably couldn't convince someone to marry you even if you had a whole love letter scrawled on your back."

The girl shoved Rey hard and she fell into the dirty waters of the nearby tub. 

"Scavenger scum," the girl muttered before quickly dressing and leaving Rey to sputter and flounder in surprise. Not before dumping Rey's clothes into the dirty water as well, of course.

She had taunted the girl, but in reality, Rey was terrified. She didn't like the idea of being bound to someone.

She didn't like a part of her life being etched on her skin. She didn't like that it took a cold stranger for her to find out about it. Had she a mother to bathe her as a babe, she'd have known about this long ago. She might have treasured the mark, like she ought. Spent less time in her skivvies when the sun grew too hot to bear her wraps and scarves.

But as it was, her destiny was a faded, mottled message on her back that had cost her one of her last three coppers.

_The droid. You've seen it._

Rey had seen a lot of droids in her time, especially now that she was a part of the castle staff. They wove in and out of the human servants, even aided in the hunts on occasion.

Rey climbed back out of the bath, wringing out her clothes and trying not to shiver as she pulled the damp things back onto her body.

She groaned. The girl had discovered the other two coins sewn into her hem and taken them, ripping her tunic besides.

Rey sighed and braced herself for the long walk back to her room.

\---

Soul bonds are rare and imprecise. They don’t spark recognition in another’s eyes at first sight, or at their first words to the other. There’s no countdown to that first meeting. A person might know and speak to their Bonded for years, but it’s not until they say the words that set their life on a different path that they will know a damn thing.

Otherwise, Prince Organa would have known that the sopping wet huntress passing him in the hall was something special, and not just a grubby looking inconvenience leaving puddles on the floor.

Rey knew nothing more than that she’d just passed Crowned Prince Organa close enough to know the scent of his soap, and that she’d been dripping bath water when she’d done it.

He was tall and beautiful, she thought. Less beautiful when he scowled at her appearance.

She ran off, drenched leather shoes squelching with each step.

\---

Leia knew that appointing Snoke as an advisor was a mistake. She knew almost as soon as he took his lesser seat beside her. She felt, in her very being, in the place her brother would call the Force, that Snoke wanted the throne she sat in, and no one in the seat beside.

But he was wise and educated and understood the Force. He was the right choice for her kingdom. He was. And with her newborn son on her hip, Leia had wanted nothing but right choices for her family.

At first she had been pleased that the creature took a shining to Ben. Ben’s father was rarely around, and Snoke had seemed to reel in that raw energy that practically pulsed from him. But the longer he’d held her son’s confidences, the more withdrawn Ben became. It had unsettled her the things he would ask. The books he would read.

But Snoke never gave her an outright reason to fear.The princess had even begun to doubt her ill givings when he’d given her nothing but sound and helpful advising for twenty-three years.

Until.

Leia woke to flames. Her hand went immediately to the other side of the bed, but she found it empty. Her heart lurched initially, but it took only a moment to remember that Han was away again. He was safe.

Leia dunked the rag next to her basin into the now cold water and covered her mouth and nose with the fabric. Ducking beneath the billowing smoke, she launched herself into the hallway. All around her were screams and flames. Her maidservants! She stepped over the body of one-- _Pria, oh Force_ \--and made her way to their quarters. Many were huddled against the wall in fear.

Leia ran across the room and touched a stone on the far wall. A portion of the wall slid away as if mechanical, showing a dark, cold staircase.

“This way!” she yelled, then rushed to the women to safety, all of them too paralyzed in fear and awe to move.

And no wonder. This castle was stone, every brick chipped from the side of the great mountain. Nothing to burn like this.

This was black magic. This was the Dark Side.

Once Leia had ushered the women into the stairway, she went back to see if there were others she could reach. She had to see if Ben--

She was greeted by a wall of flame as soon as she stepped out of her maids’ quarters.

_Ben!_

Her mind went to very unreasonable places, wondering if she could brave the flames with her untrained grasp of the Force. Just as she had made the decision to try, a horrified whirr sounded behind her and cold, metallic hands closed around her arms.

“Mistress, wait!” Leia turned to find her family’s droids, C-3PO and R2-D2 in the smoldering hallway. Threepio flailed a bit as he released her. “I do not advise this course of action. I have calculated the odds and chances of survival are less than two percent!”

Leia dragged him into the maids’ quarters about five words in, Artoo following squawking in their wake.

Once outside on the great lawn, Leia looked around her, seeing many fewer members of her court and castle than she hoped. The fire had been devastating; it was still raging in the castle, not bringing the stone structure down, but scraping its insides clean with flame and smoke. She ran to her captain of the guard, a young man named Poe.

“Ben!” she panted. “Is he--did he--”

Poe pursed his lips, shaking his head slowly. “No one has reported seeing him.”

Leia’s face contorted, and she looked back at the castle. She should have gone after him. She could have shielded herself. Wasn’t Luke always telling her that the Force in him was also in her? That she only needed to harness it?

Luke.

“ _Luke!”_

Poe gently took her arm, turning her back to him. “He’s fine, highness. Some of the injured have been taken down to the village for care. He’s assisting them there--”

She nodded, not really hearing Poe. Luke was fine, _Luke was fine._ But Ben. They hadn’t found _Ben._

“--didn’t make it out, unfortunately.”

She shook her head, focusing again on the captain. “I’m sorry?”

Poe’s heavy brow furrowed. “The Jedi, highness. The academy. That was the origin of the fire. None but Luke survived it.”

Leia staggered backwards. That didn’t make sense. The Jedi? The Jedi were…

“Where’s Snoke?” Leia asked, her voice suddenly sharp.

Poe checked the holo in his hand, his face illuminated blue as he scrolled the list of survivors. He shook his head.

“We have no record that he’s escaped.”

\---

Rey got confirmation of her soul omen while down in the village. Her quarters had been in the section of the castle that had seen the most damage. She’d gotten a pretty serious burn up both her arms, and the craggy old female whose house she’d been carted to had stripped her bare to the waist before applying a foul poultice to the burns. Rey wrinkled her nose. “You run out of bacta?” she asked.

The little brown female merely huffed and began to wrap her arms in gauze, wrist to almost shoulder.

“Do you know you have an omen on your back?” the wrinkled little being asked, more statement than question.

Rey thought back to the steamed baths, the sneering redhead pushing her in the water after mocking her omen.

“I do…” she said, suddenly curious if this woman would read it and tell her what it really said.

“Pretty brazen to neglect it like you have. Spits in the face of the Force to let it mottle and fade.”

The female finished the final wrap, and Rey pulled away, holding her tunic to her chest with shaking, smarting hands. “I’m an orphan--or good as one. I didn’t know about it until a few months ago.”

The female huffed again. She was queer looking, with large round spectacles and hugely magnified black eyes. When she looked at Rey, Rey felt as if she saw more than just her face.

“C-can you read it for me? The girl who told me about it...I think she lied to make fun of me.” The female was quiet, and Rey continued. “I’m Rey, by the way. I’m part of the hunt.”

The female considered Rey for a moment. “I’m Maz,” she said, but offered nothing further. Another long pause, and then she motioned Rey to turn around.

She did as she was instructed, and heard the clunking into place of more lenses on Maz’s spectacles.

“It says: ‘ _The droid. Where is it?_ ’”

Rey’s heart sank. She sighed, pulling on her tunic. She’d seen no less than four droids that day alone--she was looking at one right now! It was sitting rusted and useless across the room as its master cleaned and wrapped Rey’s wounds.

“What’s so special about a droid anyway? How’s a droid going to change my life when I deal with them every day?”

“It just takes one,” Maz said before retracting the lenses she’d snapped into place to read the omen.

Rey truly doubted it. Perhaps she was destined for a mechanic, come in to repair one of Plutt’s service droids, or one of the armored hunters. That was fitting. Rey had only ever known mediocre and incomplete. It made sense that an omen, something that only happened to those with souls important enough to bond to another, would be wasted on a thing like her.

She made for the front door of Maz’s house. No doubt Plutt would be looking for her, a massive fire in the castle that killed dozens not at all an excuse to slack off.

“Rey,” Maz called to her as she opened the door to the frantic midnight outside. Rey turned.

“No omen is wasted, least of all on you.”

\---

 _Maybe it’s all my fault for not telling him sooner,_ was Leia’s thought upon surveying the wreckage of the castle the next morning. It still stood, but it was hollowed out, blackened and barren.

They did not find her son’s remains.

But they also did not find Snoke’s.

Ben had learned of his heritage only months before, when a scheming senator thought he’d let fly something to divert the trajectory of Leia Organa. Ben had always been somewhat obsessive about the Black Knight Vader, and she couldn’t really blame him, with the omen he carried. She tried to pass the omen off as something unimportant--a magic fading from this world. But the more he trained in the Force, the more he treasured the black tidings etched along his spine.

Then, when he’d discovered he was descended from Vader himself…

Tears clouded Leia’s vision as she looked up at the charred shell of her home.

_I should have told him sooner._

\---

Rey felt very much like she was destined for nothing save loneliness. It had been months since she’d had any contact with a living creature--other than those that she slaughtered and passed off to Plutt.

Plutt didn’t count as a living creature, of course. No one that crooked could have a soul.

The fire had changed everything. Rey was no longer kept nicely in the cramped but warm hunters’ quarters of the castle. She was outposted now, living in a shack she’d fashioned herself out of the armored shell of a vehicle she couldn’t name. She didn’t hunt with a party, but rather laid traps and waited.

She was always waiting.

Her only solace was that there were no droids roaming the dense forest. She’d found a way, though lonely and righteously boring, to avoid her fate of being bound to another. If she saw no droids--hell!--if she saw no people, she couldn’t very well be stripped of her last ounce of independence.

Her girlish fantasies of fate and soulmates had burned in that fire. Rey had seen what came of the galaxy after Princess Leia--General Organa, now--was stripped of a legacy. She didn’t want magic--she wanted food and a warm fire, enough rain to keep the plants green and the animals she hunted fed.

She made her way into the forest to check her last snare. Today had not been a good day for scavenging and she was hopeful that this last trap would yield her something to hand over to Plutt. Would that she didn’t owe him an insurmountable debt laid down by her absent parents--she could eat well enough out here, and the creek was nearby, its waters cold and sweet. She could live on her own just fine--but her debt to Plutt had to be paid. The near endless tallies on her walls always counted towards the debt’s satisfaction, but she could never seem to produce enough to counter his vile interest.

It was with these dark thoughts that she came upon her snare, a beauty at that. Once tripped it snatched up the victim in a net woven of durasteel thread. This was the snare from which she got her most valuable pelts--nothing broken or punctured in its tripping. She saw it had engaged and her heart skipped a beat in excitement.

And then stopped dead.

Hanging above her head was a whirring, squalling, chirping, _kriffing_ droid.

She considered just leaving it there. It would release itself or it wouldn’t. She could set up a netted snare elsewhere and just leave this section of the forest be. She began to back away from it when it called out to her, pleading in its frenzied little chirps.

_Resistance. Utmost importance. Skywalker._

Rey cut the round little thing down before she could think. She had seen Skywalker once, while living in the castle. He’d survived the fire, too. But once it became clear that his entire academy burning was no accident, he’d gone. No one knew where.

That was ten years ago.

The droid--BB-8, apparently--clunked to the ground.

“The castle’s that way,” Rey said with a jerking point of her finger. She wanted the thing gone. This droid was important. This droid was one people would ask after.

_The Droid. Where is it?_

“ _It only takes one,”_ Maz had said.

As soon as the twittering thing was free, Rey turned on her heel and started towards her home. It followed her, squeaking that it needed help. And that it could tell from its roster database that Rey had been a member of the castle staff as a girl. And didn’t she want to help General Organa find her brother and bring these times of unrest to an end?

Rey huffed in frustration as she whirled back to the beeping nuisance. It chirped a _‘please’_ and Rey sighed in resignation. She jerked her head in invitation and let it pass through the door to her home.

Once inside, she busied herself with preparing her dinner. She grimaced when the smell from the small copper pot reached her. Dried meat and sour greens had gotten very old over the last ten years.

The BB unit was quiet behind her, occasionally anxiously twittering about the castle and someone named Poe. “What’s at the castle, then? What makes you so important?”

Rey knew she was treading on dangerous ground. Finding out why this droid mattered only drew her farther down a road she had tried fervently to avoid. She scratched absently at her back, where the omen had faded even more. But it wouldn’t go away. Not entirely.

In answer, the droid adjusted its lense and tilted back to project a flickering blue image. Stars and then--

“Is...is this a map? T-to Luke Skywalker?”

 _A piece of it,_ BB-8 told her, and she nodded. _The Resistance has the rest. As does the First Order._

Rey fell back at that, clattering into the small metal pantry behind her. The First Order. She’d not had any firsthand experience with them but--she’d heard things. Seen flickering images when her decrepit holo found signal enough to tell her of the galaxy around her. Lines of white armored warriors, and a Knight, cloaked in black and massive, with a gleaming iron mask.

Iron, not durasteel. Like the Dark Sith of the Empire.

“We have to get you to that castle. First thing in the morning.” Rey knew better than to venture into the woods at night. Wolves were the least of her problems in times like these.

She sighed, shaking her head and extinguishing the lights as she climbed onto her pallet. BB-8 beeped a goodnight and dimmed its glittering lights. This was stupid. She was being incredibly reckless. If she assisted this droid, if she went back to the castle--that would be the end of things.

It would likely be a member of the Resistance, or a curious servant. Perhaps this Poe BB-8 kept clicking so excitely about. Rey flopped over on her pallet.

She wanted companionship; she was starved for it. But not at the price of her soul. She didn’t want it like this, where she had no choice. And after all this time alone--what if the first person she came upon was her Bonded? Her first real contact with a being other than Plutt? She didn’t want to entertain the thought. Only this morning she had been Rey, unto herself, omen fading and a set life ahead of her. But now--

Rey awoke two hours later to the distinct sound of one of her snares releasing. She kept many about her house, knowing that the smell of so many animals slaughtered and skinned on her plot of land would draw the attention of the more ferocious of beasts in the wood. But the almost human yell that followed it and a strange thumping, crackling sound set Rey’s heart racing.

BB-8 was pulsing a dim light, its tweets frightened and questioning.

“Go out the back,” Rey whispered. “I’ll keep them busy.” She grabbed the staff she used to smash the skulls of animals in her traps and made for the door.

BB-8 squealed and she whirled around. “Go! Stay along the south bank of the creek and you won’t encounter any more of my traps. You should reach the castle by morning.”

The droid seemed to listen and rolled away. Once safely out the back entrance, Rey turned around to face her front door. Her heart felt like it was beating somewhere near the base of her throat. She reached her hand out but the thing tore off the hinges as a towering figure ducked through the low door.

There was a crackling red sword in the monster’s hand. And an iron helm covering his face.

She scrabbled backwards, weakly swinging her staff at the approaching black figure.

“The girl I’ve heard so much about.”

His voice. His voice sounded like the iron of his mask and like grinding, rusted gears. Perhaps he had a modulator in his antique mask. Or perhaps he was a creaking, corroded machine entirely.

How did he know of her? What could he know of her? She was nothing--no one. A huntress sent to live a life alone in the woods. Nothing special save the omen on her spine.

He lifted the sword, the tip just beneath her chin, like he meant to tilt her face up to his with it. Rey almost shuddered at the thought of what it would actually do. She could feel her skin tightening in reaction to the blistering heat, and a spark from the blade singed her cheek. She hissed and made to move away, but found she couldn’t.

It was like being possessed.

One moment, her body was leaning into her backwards step--then he raised his hand.

Rey solidified. She felt a sudden pressure pushing out from her insides. Not compressed, not held back by invisible hands. No single point of restraint. Simply stilled. She felt the concession of her heart’s beating, a mere inch left around the shell of the muscle to allow for its movement. The scant favor of shallow breaths. And his allowance for her eyes to rove wildly, to take in this scene of capture.

To see every inch of him as he approached her.

All else was frozen, even the synapses that might fire to have her fight this, or fear it.

She felt another push, a nudge, not on her body, but in her mind as he sifted through her thoughts. She could feel him carding through her memories like branches to be pushed out of a hunter’s path, flippant in his dismissal of those images and memories he found less than useful.

He was so close, and though she had barely the ability to breathe, she tried to stop him from seeing the droid. She didn’t know how, or to what end, but she imagined throwing a heavy cloth over the images she wanted to keep a secret.

Something shuddered, and she felt, rather than saw, his start at her resistance. His pause, as if in wonder. But her shield was cobweb thin and his pervasive probing pushed right through.

“The droid,” he said, and Rey felt as if she might faint at the horrible realization that was only now occurring to her. No. No no no no _no._ “Where is it?”

She felt a twang in her, like a string snapping on a too-tightly-strung instrument. The Black Knight staggered back, head tilting as he stepped even closer to her, crowding her against the wall.

Rey was reeling. Her Bonded. He was her Bonded. She felt it in every cell of her body, something alighting in her and drawing her forward. To him. To this masked creature bearing down on her and holding a sword of fire in his hand. The thing she had seen on those flashing holos. The threat she had heard whisper of when she was lucky enough to venture into civilization. The man who could control the space around her and look right into her mind.

This was the being the universe had selected for her. She shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. “No!” He kept trying to still her again but something-- _the soul bond?--_ was keeping it from taking hold. “No!” she screamed again, too flustered to keep him from seeing anything else when he dove into her head again.

“The map. _You’ve seen it.”_

That voice. That awful, terrifying mask. She didn’t even know his face, if he _had_ a face. He reached his hand out again and Rey hated how the bond in her warmed to it.

Then her vision went dark.

She was on a horse, an actual _horse_ when she woke. The Black Knight was behind her, spurring the horse forward at a speed much too dangerous for the woods at night. It was as if he could see things the horse could not, with how he guided him so effortlessly through the blackness. He shifted in the saddle and Rey realized that his hand was at her middle.

Did he know? Had he felt it, too?

When they stopped and he pulled her roughly from the saddle, she discovered that he had chained her to the horse and decided that, no, he absolutely did not know that she was his Bonded. That made things so much worse. How long would she live with this knowledge alone? How long until she altered the course of his life as well? She felt fairly powerless in the presence of a masked creature who could wield magic as easily as he could wield a flaming sword, so she held very little confidence on that front.

He started a fire and she looked at the great black steed pacing some yards away. The beast would step father away and tug Rey to the side. She glared at the masked man setting up what she supposed was their camp for the evening.

“You still want to kill me,” he said absently as he fed more of his gathered wood to the steadily growing fire.

“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in mask,” she spat.

He threw in the rest of the wood and pulled back his hood. Before she could protest, he’d worked the latch of his iron mask and pulled it from his face.

His features were more indistinct in the light of the fire, but she saw well enough. She recognized him, though she didn’t think it could be true.

Prince Ben Organa, more beautiful than she remembered as a frightened little girl. His hair was longer now, his large features less awkward and more aquiline.

The fire. The Jedi Academy. The sallow skinned Snoke, simpering at the Princess’s elbow. Her eyes grew wide with the implications.

This man was the Black Knight. This man--was her Bonded.

It couldn't be possible.

He walked around the fire and stopped in front of her. She took a step back and her chain rattled.

“Tell me about the droid,” he said after a long moment.

She began to rattle off the specs of the BB unit until he cut her off with a swipe of his hand.

“I know you know who I am. And you know what I can do. You know that I can just take the piece of the map from you.”

He took another step toward her. He was right up on her and she had to look up to see his eyes. Perhaps if she slaughtered him like one of the does in her snares, that would be life altering enough. Would he struggle with loving her as she flayed him, like she struggled while in his chains?

She shook her head. “You can try, but I won't let you have it.”

He smirked, lifting his hand to her face. “We'll see.”

She felt that dull nudge again, as if he were pressing his thumb between her eyes--then pressing further.

He didn't go immediately to the map, damn him. He looked at places she never thought she'd have to hide from people. Being left in the hands of Plutt, learning to hunt as a six year old. Her first kill: a long, wiry hare that bled and bled. She hadn't been able to turn that one over to the hunt, instead burying it by the creek.

“You lived in the castle, before they banished you to the woods for fear of what you could do,” he mused. He was close enough to her that she could feel his breath on her skin. It was igniting and terrifying in equal turns. “A scrawny little hunter left to work off a debt for parents who didn’t even care enough to keep you. So, so lonely.”

He was dancing around in her mind, taking little fragments and shards like so many petals plucked from a flower. He seemed to gravitate to her time in the castle, chuckling at the memory of her first seeing him and thinking him pretty.

She whipped her head away, trying to keep him from this, but he kept going. He looked farther back. To the baths. To the redheaded girl who would read her fortune and rob her blind.

No, no--he couldn’t see that. If he saw that, he’d know. She didn’t want him to know; she had to stop him! So she pushed back. She found his presence in her mind, prickling like a burr and worked him back out. Further and further until she found herself falling into thoughts she didn’t recognize. Memories that weren’t hers.

There was Prince Ben, clinging to a man she only barely recognized as Han Solo. Ben’s father peeling the boy off of him and placing him back in his mother’s arms. This scene seemed to repeat, over and over, with Ben clinging less and less with each cycle. A child, sparring with an empty suit of armor, his little wooden sword splintering into bits when he grew frustrated. Advisor Snoke, always within arms reach. Looking and whispering.

Then he was older, a boy whose body was changing before his eyes. He turned and turned in the mirrors, taking in the sparsely growing hair and-- _something black etched along his spine._ Rey wasn’t able to read it.

She saw a fight with the Princess, damning her for not telling him of his omen, when he had a right to know. _He’d not known of his omen until he was older?_ she wondered. Then books, actual books, not holos, laid out on the table before him. Book on the Empire and the Sith and Darth Vader.

Rey gulped. The memories had a theme now, a focus. He was emulating this Darth Vader, growing more and more obsessed. Sketching his own iron masks in the margins of these priceless books. Kill--killing the students of the Jedi academy as Darth Vader-- _his grandfather!--_ had done.

And his hunt of Luke Skywalker. The son of Vader who chose against the Dark. Who let that legacy die, and for what? Meditation and the Light? A passionless, wasted existence. Rey understood now. She understood.

She fell from his mind, breathless and wild eyed.

“You!” she panted.

His eyes were avoiding her, like he wanted nothing more than to not hear what she had to say.

“You’re afraid!” His eyes shot up, and he looked at her in absolute terror. “That you’ll never be as strong as Darth Vader!”

The world shuddered to a stop.

Whatever noise that had been in the woods, whatever breeze that blew and twigs that snapped--it all fell silent as they looked at each other. She felt that twang again, though more distant. Dulled.

And she realized. The omen, his obsession. She could guess what words branded him, what had haunted him since adolecense. And she had just spoken them aloud.

“You’re--you’re my Bonded.” His voice was barely a whisper.

She nodded, slow and as terrified as he was.

“I’m your Bonded.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought below! <3 <3


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